Electronic devices, big and small, are integral to the modern world—this is the age of ubiquitous computing, hyper-connectivity, and seamless mobility. An average device user of this day and age, for example, may interact with multiple electronic devices throughout the day. A smart coffee maker may automatically brew coffee based on configuration instructions received from a smartphone through a Wi-Fi network; a smart watch may constantly monitor the movement activity of the user; the smart phone may execute social media and news applications; a television may deliver news and entertainment; advertising screens outside may present information about products and services; kiosks at train stations and stores may also present various advertising items; and the list can go on. With the recent advent of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the number of electronic devices is bound to grow exponentially.
A large portion of these electronic devices are used for presenting visual content. In other words, almost all of the electronic devices, ranging from a smartwatch to a large electronic billboard have displays of different shapes and sizes. Furthermore, with advances in the touch-screen technology as a substitute physical buttons, the display screens are often the largest components of the electronic devices. The display has therefore become a focal point for a modern day interaction with devices. Every human being is constantly interacting with one display or another throughout his/her waking hours.
These displays coupled to the electronic devices have seen significant improvements over the past few decades. Cathode ray tube (CRT) display technology has given way to displays based on, for example, liquid crystal display (LCD) and light emitting diode (LED) technology. Modern display technology, such as LCD and LED, has allowed for higher resolution displays and hardware manufacturers have been pushing the limits constantly. For example, the gold standard for consumer television just a few years ago was HD (high definition) with a resolution of 1280*720 pixels (abbreviated as 720p) or full HD with a resolution of 1920*1080 pixels (abbreviated as 1020p). As the time of this writing, consumer television industry has moved towards higher resolutions and the typical consumer televisions sets are 4K with a resolution of 4096*2160 pixels and 8K with a resolution of 7680*4320 pixels. Similar strides have been made for smaller consumer devices such as smartphone or tablet computers. For example, each and every smartphone available in the market has a high fidelity display.
However, higher quality displays require higher processing capacity, which may not be readily available in all electronic devices. Higher processing capacity requires more electric power and robust heat management hardware. As the electronic devices are being increasingly untethered—small, hand carried, and not connected to a wall outlet except for charging—device manufacturers face severe constraints in terms of the processing capacity. It will sure be unwieldy for a smartphone to have cooling fan and vents for managing heat for a higher capacity processor. Furthermore, the industry has been steadily moving towards a system on a chip (SoC) model where various other functionality (such as modulation/demodulation, digital signal processing) is incorporated alongside a processing core to realize a complete system on a single substrate. By design, SoC chips have a lower performance compared to the standard desktop computer processors. Therefore, the limitations in processing capacity fail to realize a fuller potential offered by the display technology.
Even larger stationary displays used for advertising such as kiosks or digital billboards also face processing capacity constraints. While kiosks and digital billboards may have a dedicated power source, a higher processing capacity may pose other problems. A larger processing capacity requires a heat management system (often dubbed as “thermals” in the industry). Kiosks and digital billboards are generally outside and exposed to elements. Along with other hardware for these devices, the heat management system has to be made robust enough to withstand heat, rain, snow, and other elements. A more sophisticated heat management system may also be prone to failures and the repairs may be expensive. Furthermore, devices with a lower power consumption footprint are always sought after for obvious reasons.
Conventional development tools for developing digital content also have several technical shortcomings. First, conventional web development tools such as hypertext markup language (HTML) and JavaScript have their security vulnerabilities and therefore may not provide a desired level of security. Second, the conventional web conventional tools such as HTML and Javascript, which are based upon a slow parsing of extensible markup language (XML) are inherently slow and do not provide a desired speed of operation.